


tombs and other resting places

by simplyprologue



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Afterlife, Character Death, F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 20:45:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.</i> Life, and death, on Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tombs and other resting places

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** All of the thanks in the world to Emily, for the very quick and ruthless beta. And to Mira and Rachel, who put up with me while I was writing this last night. This fic is as much self-comfort (albeit very delayed, as I first watched Daybreak live almost four years ago, now) as it is a character study of Bill Adama.

_Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried._  

–Ruth 1:17 

 

* * *

 

He finds her in the sunlight and the shade, in everything that New Caprica wasn’t and Earth is, in the contrasts between space and this life-aplenty planet. He does not find her there--she is gone, and he wraps her in plaid flannel, places her hands over her chest, arranges her body into sleep in the back of the raptor, a comfort to himself. Removes the wig, brushes his index finger over the silver bracelet looped around her wrist, waned slim like the shaded moon. Gathers his strength to finish the rest. He did not want help in burying her; she hadn’t wanted her death to be a spectacle. None of the bodies strewn behind him could have prepared him for this.

In his whole life, he has always been the one to do the leaving. But she has left him behind. He cannot follow her home, not yet. There was something promised to her that he must fulfill. 

He buries his love slowly. She had carried them for so long; he is compelled to carry her that last bit further, to home, to the hearth he would build. He lays his weary traveler to rest with the sun pouring over her sunken face, papery skin--a cairn for Laura Roslin. In the burial rite of ancient supplicants of Hermes, he leaves her mark upon the soil. She was always going to be his journey’s end. Laura chased Earth, and he had chased Laura. And where she died, he died, and there he was to be buried.

He mourned her long ago, and yet when he folds her into stone, he can barely see past tears. The sky is blue, the grass green, all shades of each other, and the world is quiet except the wind and the sounds of a broken man collecting rocks. She will wither into dust, and humanity will grow. Hers is the last face he will ever see. He does not bury her with her glasses on. Weeps, and even though she is beyond his touch, wraps his arms around her legs and holds on. 

He weeps, and as the sun dims, stands. Weak—mouth dry, head pounding, hands scorched and sore—he finishes the job. Finding no rest, he lies in the grass next to her. There had never been enough space, not his bed or in her. Not enough space in their lives, to hold each other. It hadn’t been noble, or beautiful, their iron-wrought boundaries. It wasn’t a wall, but a line made of salt and sand, one they too-easily crossed, one that got others killed and made them weak where they were strong. A line, where they stood to gaze upon the other, but did not reach across. 

(It was not noble; they found no self-satisfying solace in silent restraint. It is a terrible love, and he does not wish it upon anyone else.) 

Familiar stars ascend into the sky, and the grass, green and vibrant, is such that he has tread upon before, but rests on now, weary and battle-worn with grief. Commitment with the time ticking down is no commitment at all. She is gone, but he will not abandon her. 

He laughs, and then cries again—this is what she had found for them, this is the place where he first cleaved to her; this is their first world, and their last. He has stood here before, with wonder, and with _her_ , with their children, found and then lost. 

On the planet to where humanity has fled, the stars show him their chosen homes.

The tomb is Laura’s. 

 

* * *

 

He builds the cabin; she rests nearby, but she is as far from him as the east is from the west. The sun rises over the hill, and he builds her cabin to face the dawn. He does not weep, imagining a bed with her in it, the daybreak warming pinkened skin and crisp white sheets. He almost laughs at how she would have called white sheets impractical. But he would have traced his fingers up the curve of her calves, drank the sleepiness from her lips and made love to her in solitude. 

The lumber comes from far and wide, and he uses the remnants of the raptor’s tylium to ferry it back to her bones. He builds the cabin, and speaks to her, his face turned towards the sun. He sleeps outside, and names new stars, far-off planets. Consumed in turn by exhaustion and grief, he steels himself against the clawing urge to pull the rocks from her body, to shock himself out of this torpor with the decay of flesh, the revelation of bone and sinew, the blood, cold in her marrow. To take the raptor and crash it into the sheer face of a cliff. To release the remaining fuel and send him, her, and the cabin up in flames. To end it. He found his end in her, long ago, in the bottom of a bottle and the end of a book.

He craves the end, but will not break his promise to her. He will not disturb her rest; instead, seeking Elysium in the dream of warm sheets and warmer skin. 

The cabin, and the dream thereof, is all he has left of her. She has left her mark upon Earth, etched her triumphs into the marrow of humanity, and him. 

This is not noble. This is not a good love. He has done terrible things for her before, but this is the worst. 

(He has done terrible things on his own, his worst sins of war and the shadowy specter of his boys, the childhood he missed. He has abandoned all to whom he has been truly obliged. His wife, his children, Laura. But he can do this. He must do this. It is his punishment, and his salvation. He should find no relief in it.) 

Bill Adama works towards his end, his mind dashed with images of her red hair, her aloof smile, and his hands steady and firm, holding allotted timber boards and a carefully drawn plan. It is a burden to walk away for food or drink; his legs falter but his heart does not, and as the weeks pass into months and into a new season of life, he no longer has the strength to do much more but stagger to her side after nightfall. But he does not stop building, not for rain or for illness, or the weakness in his limbs or the pain below his ribs, the slow-spreading bloat. 

 _I love you_ , he says, once for every time he did not. For the nebulae and stars and meteor belts that they steered past, for the planets they left footprints on. For the children they lost. Once for every time she should have died, or he. Once for every time she did. Twice. Again, because he does not know why he saved her glasses, of all things. _I love you, I love you, I love you._  

He is free to say it, now. She rests, and says nothing. She comes into his thoughts, and he knows, at least, that he is not empty. That he has not sacrificed everything. 

The seasons change, but the cold does not shake his skin. He is beyond that, now, fever-sweat clinging to his skin. It hurts, all of it does. His body, this existence without her. He is not strong enough to cry, bile deep in his throat. He builds a cabin for Laura Roslin. He only wanted her, and now all he can have is her dream, fleeting as it was. He is a soldier, he soldiers on, a veteran at the end of an unyielding campaign. He trained all his life for this pain. It does not break him.

( _She did_ ; his shattered fragments make up the bones of her home.)

It will be his tomb. 

 

* * *

 

It is Kara who comes for him at the last, the first morning in Laura’s cabin. He is barely breathing as he lies upon the ground, skin yellowed with jaundice, as daybreak begins to creep over the horizon. He does not hear the door open, but she is at his side.

 _You’re beautiful_ , he tells her, and she brings her cheek to his outstretched hand. She is waiting, for him, for something else, gathering behind her eyes. He understands, then. 

Their names will be forgotten, he knows, but the story told over and over again. Humanity will not build cities named after them, or write books laying all the blame at their feet, but their story will be on pages after pages. It is a blessing; being forgotten will be absolution for their sins. For his, for them. For the cost they paid, so that humanity would be worthy of survival. But not them. Laura was the cost. And his love for her was his. He built his promised land in the prophet, allowed himself to be torn asunder, reft between her and duty. It is love, terrible and final. The last word. 

This is the end.

He feels like he lives (or something else, entirely) outside of his body, inside of Laura’s cabin. Death is expansive, and Kara smiles down at him. Life has left marks on him, his family, fragile at times and cobbled-together, most of all. And Laura, his wife without marriage, but bound to him by a more sacred covenant. But the one he will leave behind… 

 _Where is Lee?_  

Kara’s smile is serene, and he traces her cheekbones with a weathered thumb. _Far behind us_. 

 _Good._  

He leaves the stars behind; the first light of day guiding him home. 

 

* * *

 

Lee finds the body a few hours later, when the sun is high in the sky; his father has always gone beyond his reach. (Too late, he has run out of second chances and near-misses.) The cabin sheltering his shrunken form is crude, but sturdy. His father is small; his father has never been small. The man he knew, the man who left, was large and god-like, broad-shouldered and loud in voice, even when it was quiet in timber. He was a man who commanded, who inhabited every room of a battlestar. But he is diminished by death, in the shadow of his one last task. Lee finds the body, silhouetted against the dirt floor, one arm reached out into sunlight. 

The little boy in him, the one who never quite left, who reached out and thrashed and cried out and hurt, hurt his father, hurt his own wife, asserts himself, sudden and violent. This is his cost—he has given chase, at last, to this man and all his ghosts. 

He buries his father in the dirt floor of the cabin, and seals the tomb. 

He carries William Adama with him, like he does Kara Thace, and all the others whose lives he has been party to, in sacrifice, all the way back to 1,345 souls aboard the _Olympic Carrier_. They all have prices to pay; Lee Adama wanders far beyond the close of fortune’s wheel.

He leaves their bodies behind, but not his own. 

His heart will be buried, not on this planet, but instead with those who do not live upon it. He wanders. The little boy is all that is left, crying out in the shell of a man. 

He wanders, feet sore. He finds no rest, wherever they carry him. He has years to go.

 

* * *

 

Death proves Laura Roslin right, but so, he thinks, did life. He does not mind being wrong, not now, with the sunlight warm upon his face; an atheist on the boat to shore. (Besides, he has believed in the gods as long as he has believed in her. As long as he has followed her. It is only right that the universe, the gods, have allowed him to follow her here. He has paid his price.) The certainty of life beyond death is a slow exhale of a long-held breath. Oxygen floods his bloodstream; he feels lighter than he has in years.

Laying down his burdens allows him to stand tall; he smiles at long-last, the sand-swept banks crowded with his mother, his father, sister, brother, his brothers and sisters in arms, fellow travelers and friends. He falls into Zak’s arms first, smooths his hair away from his face, and kisses his forehead, the boy most sinned against.

 _Please forgive me, I love you_. Six years, and he exhales at last. _I love you._ He breathes, moving easily now, in the sunlight and the shade, and makes peace with ghosts who have haunted him for almost half a century now. Shades of blue and vibrant greens. Peace, for William Adama, buried far from his uniform and far from his command, far from his home and close to his heart. _I love you._

Zak, and then his other children, brown-eyed and blue-eyed and green-eyed. The ones he sent off to their deaths as heroes. Those who walked willingly. Those torn from him, from life.

Then he looks for her; he has lived without her for so long.

He looks for her in the sunlight and the shade, and finds her far beyond the crowds. His love is contrary, and younger than he ever saw her in life, majestic and solemn, dressed in white, long red hair curling to her waist. His feet take him to follow her once more, up the distance, and he finds himself a younger man, irrevocably changed by a life lived, a heart that stayed too long.

And then he is in her arms, her flush hips a miracle, full lips and lively smile urging, and he kisses her, exhales into her skin, and everything is white light and a fair wind, a red sky at night and every star his stricken heart named in her honor. Warm-blooded, she tastes like the sun, like the beginning and the end of it all. 

 _I love you,_ he whispers into her neck. _I love you I love you I love you._ For every minute of separation, for the hour upon death. For every dawn and every sunset, for the sunlight and the shade, for every hour spent sleeping or weeping. That he is allowed this. That the promise has not been for naught, for the universe not allowing him to turn back from following her. _I love you._

She breathes him whole, seals their lips together, seals his heart whole again, the pads of her fingers grazing his jaw. Her curves are full, cheeks flushed, skin unblemished by age or suffering. _It was worth it_ , he thinks with wonder.

Laura, blessedly whole, looks at him, and he folds her fingers into his and kisses her palm, presses his lips close enough to feel the warmth of the blood in her veins. 

 _About time_ , she murmurs, before her voices rises into a giggle. They have no reason to keep apart, now. No reason to mourn.  

They laugh, crying, and kiss again.

She takes his hand and he follows her home. 

 

* * *

 

There is a cabin. 

It’s warm, a fire roaring at the foot of their large bed (white cotton sheets, down comforter, laden with pillows and everything they never had while they were alive, like space… for both of them) as Laura changes the season, conjuring up a blizzard in their little bit of heaven to warn the others away—this is her night, her time, and she’ll have it now that they’ve both laid down her burdens. She is cast in golden light; he will never be free of her, has never been. Their fates had been placed side by side, from the first of it. She has not been to this place before. She has waited, for him. 

But there is no regret, there is no room for it here. 

(This is a burial ground for the pains and sufferings of life, for what they sacrificed of themselves to get their people home. They become whole.) 

Bill thinks he hasn’t seen snow since New Caprica. That thought is quickly chased away when he feels Laura’s skin under his hands, and she’s strong, so strong, and warm like the sun, and frenetic, her hair red like blood and eyes vibrant green, alight with mischief and he almost wants to cry. He picks her up (because he too is strong again, after long months watching his skin yellow and feeling himself wasting away, as he worked himself into the grave finishing her cabin) and carries her to bed, to the sheets he dreamed up in his head. Her skin flushes when he touches her bare skin. 

Why didn’t they do this more when she was strong, when they had the chance? he thinks, desperately trying to feel more of her under his hands, his lips; he wants her under his skin, in his veins, when she’s spent weeks and months only existing in his head and _oh gods_ his ring is still on her finger, and all he can think is that she carried it with her, and he believes.

She clutches him to her and he can’t wait, but neither can she and he pushes into her (it’s a sweet homecoming, and it disappears altogether, until it’s them on this bed in their cabin) murmuring everything he’s missed into her ear.

 _It doesn’t matter now_ , Laura tells him, but the way she frantically kisses him, pushes her tongue past his lips without grace, so opposite the way she did on the shore. _We’re together now,_ she whimpers, knowing there’ll never be a reason to be apart ever again, no reason to pain, to weep and shatter apart. She is his chosen home; all lights have led to her. They made these bones together, gilt and jagged and once again, consummate and complete.

The cabin is their resting place.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
